Our nation is hurt, plagued with pain from the presidential election. The road was long and filled with scandal after scandal from both candidates, which damaged our nation’s integrity and morals.
Donald Trump has won the election. That is extremely difficult for me to say, but nonetheless, he is now the president-elect and will be taking office in January. So what do we non-Trump supporters do now?
Truly, we cannot do anything about who has been elected president. It is something no one can really change, and it is something that we must accept and with which we must deal.
After dealing with our grief about the country’s future, we must move on.
However, we must not forget that Trump is not president just yet. We still have time to enjoy and honor President Barack Obama’s last days in the White House, and I think that is what we should be focusing on at this moment.
We should be honoring him, not dwelling on the things that have not happened yet.
We have less than 3 months to enjoy Obama being in office until Trump becomes the official face of the American people. I personally want to thank President Obama for all the good he has done for our country.
In my opinion, Obama’s biggest accomplishment as president has been the Affordable Care Act. He expanded Medicaid to new heights in order to help even more low-income people have access to sufficient healthcare services.
This gave medical coverage to more than than 16 million people who did not have any before.
He broke down the barriers between classes, races, sexualities and genders. He was the first president to openly and fully support LGBTQ rights. During his term, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. This gave people the ability to be who they are and love whom they want with nothing to hold them back from being happy.
He gave new hope to citizens and made us believe that not all politicians are evil.
President Obama made us believe that America is great, flaws and all. He made us see that progress does not happen overnight, but it does happen.
We needed his presidency to give us hope for humanity, hope in the political system and hope in our nation.
Most importantly, he taught us very recently that no matter what, “The sun will rise in the morning,” and that we can get through anything, as long as we unite and reconcile with the people around us.
Thank you, President Obama, for being the best president that we have had in a long time.
Mikala Turner is a sophomore social work major from Bruce.
